Portillo Agonistes

12:00AM GMT 29 Nov 2000

POLITICAL journalists spend their lives trying to interpret the signals that politicians send out. For many years, the signals from Michael Portillo have been plainer than most. "I am the future Leader of the Conservative Party," they have said. Although from time to time he has pulled back from the challenge - everyone remembers the famous incident of the telephone lines put in but never used in a house in Lord North Street in the John Major years - Mr Portillo has never seemed content with anything but the top. His followers like him not because he is competent, but because he is messianic. In this sense, his famous "SAS" speech at the Tory party conference in Bournemouth in 1995 was similar to his extraordinary "inclusive" speech in Bournemouth last month. Both implied broad claims for the man who delivered them. Both excited the attention, admiration and obloquy that go with leadership.

And yet Mr Portillo's signals have recently become very confusing. As we report on our front page today, he now says that he has no ambition to be leader of the Tories. His friends, and, indeed, his opponents have noticed an unhappiness that partially disables his efforts to take on the Labour Government. For someone who is so intelligent and can be so eloquent, Mr Portillo seems surprisingly uneasy in his role as shadow chancellor. When William Hague boldly gave the newly elected Mr Portillo this important job, everyone expected the smoke of battle. Instead, it has been Hamlet rather than Henry V. Ever since he told the world, in the autumn of 1999, about his youthful homosexual experiences, Mr Portillo has treated the public stage more like the psychiatrist's couch than the politician's rostrum. Journalists have tended to see this as a leadership bid in a new guise - a touchy-feely way of updating his appeal.

Perhaps they have been wrong. Perhaps Mr Portillo is genuinely filled with doubts and agonies. Perhaps he is making a journey of the soul and is sending us all postcards en route. If so, his quest for truth should be respected. The trouble, though, is that, while all this goes on, there is a government to oppose and, soon, an election to fight. If Mr Portillo is to have such a prominent place - one that his talents fully justify - then he needs to throw himself wholeheartedly into the fight. When a man such as he says that he does not want to be leader, it is hard not to interpret this as a message that he wants to leave front-line politics altogether, rather than that he wants to do everything he can for Mr Hague. Mr Portillo will complain that he is damned whatever he says, and there is some truth in this, but there can be no doubt that his colleagues, friend and foe alike, are worried. After a false dawn during the fuel tax crisis, the Conservatives now feel gloomy about their electoral prospects. They badly need optimism and attack from the men and women at the top. Mr Portillo should provide these qualities as quickly as possible if he is not to weaken the party that he says he wants not to lead, but to serve.